{"id":323119,"date":"2025-08-06T18:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T18:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323119\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T18:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T18:00:17","slug":"wait-a-minute-camera-manufacturers-have-been-doing-white-balance-wrong-all-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323119\/","title":{"rendered":"Wait a minute, camera manufacturers have been doing white balance WRONG all along?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whilst browsing \u2018the tube\u2019 for my lunchtime viewing, I happened upon a rather clickbaity-looking title, \u201cWhite Balance is Broken\u201d, by @MinutePhysics<\/a>. So, I took the bait, and from the opening statement, \u201calmost all professional photographic, video, and cinema cameras do white balance wrong,\u201d I was hooked. What grabbed me about this particular YouTube<\/a> channel is that it\u2019s about science and physics, not cameras, so I was interested to hear an unbiased take.<\/p>\n

White Balance is Broken – YouTube
\n\"White<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Above: the YouTube video that challenges standard camera’s WB settings
<\/strong><\/p>\n

The video points out that there\u2019s not much difference between white balance<\/a> options in enthusiast-level cameras and cinema cameras. As @MinutePhysics reveals, \u201cKelvin and color are not linearly related\u201d. Manually changing white balance requires you to alter the Kelvin unit, but cameras change the Kelvin scale in equal increments: 5200K, 5300K, 5400K and so on.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The problem is that although these increments are numerically equidistant apart, this doesn\u2019t translate to the actual color temperature. So, the jump in color temperature from 5200K to 5300K and 5300K to 5400K isn\u2019t linear. The result is a color temperature spectrum that\u2019s heavily weighted towards warmer color temperatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As @MinutePhysics puts it: \u201cOn the lower end of the Kelvin scale, a small change in white balance leads to a big change in color\u201d. That means if your white balance is off by, say, one or two increments, it\u2019ll appear farther out at the lower, cooler end than the higher, warmer end of the spectrum.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know about you, but that blew my mind. And the odd thing is, I think I\u2019ve subconsciously noticed this, I just never questioned it. @MinutePhysics ponders why white balance isn\u2019t treated more like exposure, which also isn\u2019t linear, but the increments reflect this, e.g. f\/2.8, f\/4, f\/5.6 aren\u2019t numerically equidistant apart, but each indicates the aperture narrowing by one stop of light. Thankfully, @MinutePhysics has come up with a solution, but you\u2019ll have to watch the full video<\/a> (above) to find out what it is.<\/p>\n

You might also like… <\/p>\n

Interested in more technical articles? Here’s one on field of view<\/a>. Struggling to nail your white balance? That’s why you should shoot RAW<\/a>. Finally, the best LED light panels <\/a>allow you to alter their color temperature output on the fly.<\/p>\n

The best camera deals, reviews, product advice, and unmissable photography news, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whilst browsing \u2018the tube\u2019 for my lunchtime viewing, I happened upon a rather clickbaity-looking title, \u201cWhite Balance is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-323119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114983130593859621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}